The Unknown Hero

THEY HUNG GEORGE DAY FROM HIS FEET LIKE A SIDE of beef. He refused to talk.

They whipped him, punched him and kicked him. He still wouldn`t talk.

To cooperate with his North Vietnamese captors would not have been honorable, and Day had vowed that no matter what happened, he would keep his honor.

Honor would come to mean many things for Col. George ``Bud`` Day, a crack Air Force pilot who was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese on Aug. 26, 1967. But six days into his captivity, he began to realize that he could not endure many more beatings. Rather than sacrifice his honor, he decided he had to escape.

Day, then 42, already suffering from a mangled arm and injured knee, devised a plan. He would pretend that the beatings had caused such severe internal injuries that he could not move. This would convince his guards that he posed no threat.

When the time was right, Day wriggled from the underground cell and crawled to freedom. He looked to the night sky and the brilliance of the Milky Way galaxy to guide him south to the demilitarized zone. He ate frogs and berries to stay alive. He limped on swollen, infected feet through the dense jungle.

He almost made it. Almost. Within a few days, George Day was recaptured.

He would spend the next 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war. During those 66 months, his Communist captors would beat him bloody, force him to kneel for hours, starve him, put his weakening body in irons and try to indoctrinate him with propaganda. They would tell him lies and withhold letters from his family. But no matter what happened, George Day vowed to keep his honor.

On March 14, 1973, the North Vietnamese released Colonel Day. He came back to the United States looking like a skeleton, his face drawn, his eyes sunken. But he had kept his honor.

Colonel day would earn an honor of another sort, one that would put him in the most exclusive group of American war veterans of all time.

Remember George Day?

George ``Bud`` Day is the nation`s most highly decorated living war veteran. The honors he received after returning from Vietnam were added to an already impressive collection of awards for bravery and valor. He has been awarded every major combat medal in a military career that spanned three wars.

Remember George Day?

He happens to be the first pilot ever to survive after bailing out of a jet fighter without a parachute. He is the only American known to have escaped from a prison camp in North Vietnam and then be recaptured in the South.

Remember George Day?

He won the nation`s highest military award, the Medal of Honor.

Day, who retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1978, has about 70 military awards. He says he`s lost track of the exact number, and the Pentagon says it hasn`t kept count. Among his ``gongs,`` as he calls them, are the Air Force Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and many, many more. He also received South Vietnam`s highest military medal.

Remember George Day?

Chances are pretty good that you don`t remember him, or for that matter, ever heard of him. He is a war hero who has gone largely unnoticed. Day didn`t get any Hollywood movie contracts or make network television appearances after he came home.

He didn`t get as much press as some of the other ``most decorated`` heroes of previous wars, men like Lt. Audie Murphy and Sgt. Alvin York. George Day never became a household name. Today he lives in quiet anonymity in Shalimar, Florida, a small town near Fort Walton Beach in the Panhandle.

Audie Murphy, who killed 240 German soldiers during World War II, capitalized on his name recognition and became a movie star. Sgt. York, who forced 132 Germans to surrender in World War I, was known everywhere. And there was Neville Brand, another World War II hero, who became a character actor in television and movies.

George Day, now 61, never attained that kind of fame -- and nor did he seek it. Book publishers and talent agents did not knock on his door when he came home from Vietnam. The war did not create any larger-than-life military heroes, regardless of their valor.

A hero from an unpopular war? Forget it. The country was too busy wondering what the hell was going on over there in the first place.

But perhaps what also has kept the most highly decorated living veteran out of the limelight has been his paradoxical mixture of political, moral and philosophical views -- views that have angered his superiors and much of the public.

GEORGE DAY WAS A Military man who felt an absolute obligation to respect his superiors and carry out his duty, but he never held back when it came to criticizing the decision-makers in the Pentagon. He was, and still is, a hard- line right-wing conservative, while at the same time, a stinging critic of the military power structure to which he was so dedicated.